him as a fellow Templar, and there is later reference to his commencing practice at the English Bar but finding few clients. Other sources report a London meeting with the celebrated Irish actor Charles Macklin who encouraged Daly to seek his fortune on the stage, following which he made an anonymous debut in the role of Othello at Covent Garden in March 1779. His performance on that occasion is said to have been poorly received, but in the following month his benefit night was successful, and shortly afterwards he returned to Ireland in the company of Thomas and Ann Crawford who had also been playing at Covent Garden. Marriage and early career in theatre He made his Dublin stage debut in May 1779 when, at the Crow Street Theatre, he appeared in the role of Lord Townly in The Provok'd Husband, playing opposite Mrs Crawford who had inherited the theatre from her previous husband, Spranger Barry. Soon afterwards Daly married the "beautiful and fashionable" actress Jenny Barsanti, a daughter of the musician Francesco Barsanti. She was the widow of John Richard Kirwan Lyster, who had died in January that year, and brought Daly both a stepdaughter (Lyster's posthumous child) and an annuity. She had made her stage debut at Covent Garden seven years earlier, had delivered the Epilogue when George Colman retired as manager there, and had been the original Lydia Languish in Sheridan's The Rivals. She possessed talent which her friend Frances Burney was "sure will in time raise her to the highest pitch of fame". Mrs Daly immediately devoted herself to instructing her new husband "in the mechanical and technical points of the dramatic art and succeeded in rendering him a respectable actor". The couple made their first stage appearance together in November 1779 as Beverly and Belinda in the Crow Street production of Arthur Murphy's All in the Wrong, and in the following February they played in George Farquhar's The Inconstant. In April 1780 they appeared in John Burgoyne's The Maid of the Oaks and Sheridan's The School for Scandal. These productions were staged under the management of Thomas Ryder who, while leasing Crow Street from Ann Crawford, also occupied the Smock Alley Theatre. Although "esteemed the best hearing house in Europe", Smock Alley stood idle and was rented by Ryder simply to prevent it falling into a competitor's hands. In order to escape this double burden,